Biggest lies

 

I saw a tweet by a well known software developer the other day that, being in the software industry myself, made me think. He was talking about the way in which the marketing and sales people in our industry exploit (ruthlessly) the fact that most people who buy their wares have no idea how they work nor what the industry buzz words used to describe them mean (usually none of the marketing people understand it either). Like a lot of consumer groups buyers tend to largely adhere to a "herd" mentality when it comes to purchasing decisions, leading to the age-old adage "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" etc... I guess this isn't different in any other industry really, but I can't help feeling that it's a particular problem in the computer/software domain simply because these things are so pervasive these days (and expensive).

The substance of the text was "Is there any greater lie than private cloud?" 

So here he's talking about the fact that a lot of companies claim to offer "private cloud" facilities, essentially this means a customer using computers and software physically located on the premises of the vendor, services that are "managed" by the vendor. This is as opposed to the buyer having the hassle and expense of managing their own computers and applications. It's a reasonable strategy for some kinds of applications but the term "private cloud" implies that the computers being used are somehow "private" i.e. not used by anyone else and also, there's a kind of implied message that doing it this way is somehow more safe, secure and robust than say "public cloud" which sounds like a free-for-all. Of course this is usually a myth, i.e. exactly the opposite is often true. Most vendors share "private cloud" resources between all their clients (i.e. it's not private at all!) and typically independent (smaller) companies have infrastructure that's much less well specified, maintained and managed than larger public companies offering "public cloud" services. So, most of the time the perception that these "buzz words" are intended to invoke in the customer is a kind of lie.

This made me think about what other terms are commonly used in my industry that are like this, i.e. essentially lies. There are many, here's a list of the most frequent I see doing the rounds at the moment.

• We use AI to solve <insert whatever business problem you like>
• World-class <insert business function here>
• User friendly (WTF does this actually mean, against what standard?)
• <insert business function here> Platform (makes it sound bigger than it actually is)
• Intelligent <combine with any other buzzword> (compared to what?)
• Smart <insert adjective of choice> (as opposed to "stupid"?)

Often you see companies claiming to use AI to solve business problems. I would conservatively estimate that over 85% of these claims are lies. The problem is that the term "AI" is such a loosely defined one, i.e. it means many things to many people. Most software vendors rely on the fact that if you look hard enough then you can usually find something in most systems or the supply chain, that could be misleadingly described as "AI". Of course, if you go by the criteria with which this term is used within the technical community, i.e. the people that actually know, it's invariably a blatant lie. 

You may be thinking, so why do companies do this? It's the age old tale, things like "AI" are trendy and marketing departments around the globe have convinced corporate buyers that they need to have it or risk falling behind. To a large degree the (largely) ignorant decision makers within their respective (non-IT) industries have fallen for this, and so software vendors have decided that they must have the words "we use AI" on the WEB site or they risk losing out to competitors who do! It's a classic arms-race situation, but at its foundation sits a double sided lie. Most corporate business problems don't need AI and couldn't use it even if they wanted to and most software vendors don't actually use it either, a case of the emperors new clothes, i.e. as long as everyone goes along with the hype they will continue to be lied to.